The field of this invention relates to the welding of separate metallic cylindrical tubular members. More particularly the subject matter of this invention relates to a track mounted welding head base upon which the welding head is to be mounted during the automatic production of the weld between separate metallic cylindrical tubular members.
The use of automatic welding equipment to weld together two sections of a pipe has long been known. The use of the automatic welding equipment is so as to achieve as close to a perfect weld as possible. The use of the automatic welding equipment is far superior to welding by a human being as it eliminates the possiblity of any human error.
It has been common in the past to mount some form of track assembly on the pipe upon which is mounted the welding head assembly. The welding head assembly is movable around the track to automatically produce a weld which in turn will weld two sections of the pipe together. In order to produce the necessary extremely high quality weld, the equipment designed in the supporting of the welding head onto the pipe must be constructed to be of extremely high quality. Any pause of the welding head assembly, if only for a split second, will be sufficient to affect the quality of the weld. Any flaw of even a fraction of an inch within the entire length of the weld will result in the producing of an unsatisfactory weld. Therefore, it is exceedingly important that the welding head assembly be continuously and positively engaged with the track as long as it is operated to move the welding head assembly about the pipe.
Therefore, there is a need to construct a welding head assembly mounting base to facilitate low frictional movement of the welding head on the track upon which it is mounted and also insure that the movement of the welding head about the pipe is constant and precisely spaced at the same spacing in respect with the pipe as the welding head moves about the pipe.